In recent years, a large amount of bills have been handled in banks, large-scale retailers and the like on a daily basis, and a business has been present which classifies and arranges these bills in accordance with money types and wearing states (degrees of damage of the bills). Usually, when the amount of the bills increases, the bills are managed in a state where they are bound with a bundling tape every 100 bills. Therefore, as an apparatus which automates such an arrangement business of the bills, a bill arrangement apparatus has been suggested. This bill handling apparatus includes a hopper section which stacks and receives unclassified bills, a conveyance mechanism which picks up and conveys the bills one by one from this hopper section, an inspecting section which inspects types and damage degrees of the conveyed bills, a plurality of pocket sections which classify and accumulate the inspected bills in accordance with the money types or the like, and a strapping section which binds the accumulated bills every 100 bills with the tape or paper band.
For example, in financial institutions and the like, there has broadly prevailed an automatic teller machine (hereinafter referred to as the ATM) which enables customers to automatically perform the payment, remittance and the like of transaction mediums such as the bills and coins, and the number of the installed machines keeps on increasing. The ATM includes a loading storage such as an ATM cassette or a loading cassette which receives the bills as the transaction mediums, and through this loading storage, the bills are paid to the customers, or the bills deposited by the customers are accumulated in the loading storage. It is necessary to resupply and collect the bills to and from such an ATM in accordance with a use situation thereof. Therefore, there has been suggested a cash handling system including a loading storage having a function of automatically resupplying and collecting the bills to and from a plurality of ATMs.
In the above cash handling system, it is necessary to newly prepare the loading storage to be exclusively used for the resupply and the collection of the bills, which increases cost. Moreover, it is necessary to provide a space where the loading storage is disposed in each ATM, which enlarges the ATM.
Moreover, for the hopper section, there has been suggested a device which vertically stacks and picks up about 1000 paper sheets at maximum at a time. However, when the 1000 or more paper sheets are stacked, a frictional force between the paper sheets increases owing to the gravity of the stacked paper sheets. In consequence, when the paper sheets are taken out of the hopper section, a separation force is defeated by the frictional force at the time of the pick up, so that the paper sheets cannot stably be taken out. That is, there take place the slippage of the paper sheets, the pick up of double sheets, the dragging of the sheets, and the like. Furthermore, the coins or foreign matters are carried together with the taken paper sheets sometimes. If these matters are conveyed to the inspecting section, the inspecting section might break down.